MIRRI-ERIC at Food System Microbiomes 2025: Advancing Microbiomes for Climate-Smart Food Systems

Last month, Wageningen (Netherlands) hosted the Food System Microbiomes 2025 International Conference, bringing together leading experts from science, policy, and industry to explore how microbiomes can transform our food systems. The discussions highlighted the critical role that these microscopic communities play in creating healthier, more sustainable, and climate-resilient food systems, and offered a unique platform to share knowledge, research, and innovative solutions.

MIRRI-ERIC was happy to take an active part in this landmark event, particularly in representing one of the EU projects that is currently coordinating, MICROBES-4-CLIMATE. Our Executive Director, Ana Portugal Melo, co-chaired the session "Microbiomes for Mitigating Climate Change" alongside Eiko Kuramae from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology.

During the session, Ana delivered a presentation titled "MIRRI-ERIC and MICROBES-4-CLIMATE: advancing culturomics and synthetic communities for climate action", co-authored with Anneleen D. Wieme (BCCM/LMG), Luca Cocolin (DISAFA/UNITO/Sus-Mirri), Malek Marian (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), and Marco Beccuti (University of Turin). The presentation showcased how MIRRI-ERIC and the MICROBES-4-CLIMATE Project are advancing the use of culturomics and synthetic microbial communities to support climate-smart food systems, demonstrating the potential of microbiomes to address pressing challenges in agriculture and sustainability.

 

Connecting with MIRRI-ERIC Nodes

Food System Microbiomes 2025 was also an opportunity for MIRRI-ERIC to connect deeper with one of their Nodes, the Italian one, Sus-mirri-it, participating in the conference within the poster session. Presenting the poster "Bridging data and disease: a reproducible metagenomic workflow framework within MIRRI-IT's HPC Platform", Sandro Contaldo had the chance to network with Ana Portugal Melo in a fruitful and interesting moment of shared knowledge between a representative of a MIRRI-ERIC Node and the Executive Director of MIRRI-ERIC.

Throughout the conference, participants explored how microbiomes can contribute to soil health, food quality, and climate resilience, emphasising the need for collaborative research and shared infrastructures. MIRRI-ERIC’s participation underscored its commitment to enabling researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to harness microbial resources for sustainable food systems and climate action. The discussions also highlighted the importance of European initiatives like MICROBES-4-CLIMATE in fostering cooperation and advancing microbiome research across borders.

The Food System Microbiomes 2025 conference was a reminder of the transformative power of microbiomes and the role of collaboration in driving innovation. MIRRI-ERIC's contributions, through both leadership in the session and insights shared in the presentation, reflect the organisation's ongoing mission to support research infrastructures that make scientific knowledge actionable for a more sustainable and climate-resilient future.